That’s what I have loved about this show: It doesn’t offer any direct explanation for itself.

In any other Hollywood TV series or movie, you would have a massive information dump/exposition that explains everything. The truths would revealed and the secrets exposed.

Not Twin Peaks. The viewer is left to interpret what they have experienced. They must do the mental legwork themselves to figure things out. There are no easy paths. This show is very smart and demands intelligence form its viewers.

It is also Art in that it can be interpreted in many ways be the viewer. There are so many aspects of the show that let the viewer project their own views on it.

I can see viewers and critics hating the ending because it did not wrap up neatly. It could have stopped with Episode 17 and have had a relatively “happy” ending. And yet, Lynch and Frost pushed forward to give it a true and honest conclusion. Twin Peaks has never been about embracing convention. It’s mission is to subvert and dissect the standards and tropes of stories and storytelling.

I loved this series (Episode 8 will always be a high water mark for television) but hope they don’t do another series. It feels like we got a conclusion. It was not a happy one but due to the nature of the series, it was appropriate. To do another series to give us a “happy ending” would feel like a surrender to Hollywood convention. If it were to happen, I would hope Lynch would find a way to subvert expectations and give viewers what they need, not what they want.

Regardless of the show’s future, I enjoyed it tremendously and am satisfied with what we got.

I think it might have been fitting if Cooper morphed into Red, the drug dealer played by Balthazar Getty, during episode 18.

I’m not really seeing this as a story at all, it doesn’t fulfill the basic elements of story; it doesn’t have a story’s progress and resolution nor a protagonist with a clear purpose. For me it works better to see it as separate, tangentially related vignettes. And it works only to a certain extent. I found some characters compelling, others not at all. For me the biggest problem was that evil Cooper just didn’t make sense. He didn’t seem to have a goal or a purpose.

I’m not sure what to think. Going into the last episode, I thought we were going to have a final battle of sorts. That Coop would bring Laura and Sarah together and something would happen. And then that episode happened.

I don’t want to get into a deep analysis because at this point the finale defies analysis. It’s left me confused in a good way, dumbfounded even. But I’m going to be thinking about it for quite some time. And I’m going to watch these 18 hours again and keep thinking.

Laura asked me what I thought, and I said I could write a book. And then someone else could write a book with completely opposite opinions and they’d both be right, like interpretations of an avant-garde painting. Twin Peaks is art, and as such it has no need to be easily digestible and explainable. It’s stirred up feelings and thoughts in me - and in all of us in this thread - in a way that no other TV show could.

For me the biggest problem was that evil Cooper just didn’t make sense. He didn’t seem to have a goal or a purpose.

I think we can infer that he wanted to bring the Experiment/Judy into the world, or perhaps control her in some way. That’s why she wanted him dead. She’s likely the anthead thing that we saw depicted on the playing card and on Hawk’s map. This also explains the glass box in NYC. I don’t know why the show needed to be so coy about all that, though. It’s also unclear why he thought the portal to the White Lodge in Twin Peaks would help him get her. Maybe he just needed to get to Major Briggs, who could give him Judy’s identity.

One thing I realized is that Dale undid Laura’s moment of triumph from the end of FWWM. In the movie, she bound herself to the Black Lodge and rejected BOB, which allowed her to become the being of white light we saw in episode 2 (as the white light imagery goes hand in hand with the angel that appeared before her at the end of the movie). It was then, and only then, that she could be used to counter Judy’s darkness.

But whatever she whispered to Dale shook him to his core, and he saw no choice but to try and change the past. That moment of decision echoed through time and gave Judy an opening to tear Laura from both the Black Lodge and the past and turn her into the murderer Carrie Page.

I think whatever Laura whispered had to do with the evil being our own, the central theme of the series. While Dale thought he was truly helping Laura by rescuing her from the past and bringing her to the White Lodge portal, he stopped her from earning her redemption. I think he acted selfishly in part. Saving Laura and using her to end Judy would stop him from ever going into the Black Lodge and unleashing his evil upon the world–an evil that raped Audrey and Diane and took countless lives over 25 years.

It’s also unclear why he thought the portal to the White Lodge in Twin Peaks would help him get her.

If we take the Giant’s words of “it’s in our house now” at some semblance of face value…maybe some aspect of Judy is there. We know Sarah is a conduit, but she also appeared in the box, so it’s not outside the realm of reason.

I think we can infer that he wanted to bring the Experiment/Judy into the world, or perhaps control her in some way. That’s why she wanted him dead.

That’s a good guess but for me it just felt a bit vague. If he was after the Experiment why wasn’t he in New York with the glass box? Why was he hanging out in South Dakota? Why did he believe all these coordinates would lead him to the Experiment? As a character he seemed a bit “empty”. I missed a tether to the story, someone with a clear motive and emotional and rational relatibility, who drives the viewer through the narrative. It wasn’t Dougie either, he was empty too, but in another way. In the original series this was Dale Cooper and in the movie that was Laura, but there was something missing here for me personally.

I think it is something David Lynch does purposely. He just doesn’t show or explain these narrative links. So we just have a lot of character going through stuff that is losely thematically linked, without the usual story elements. The most jarring is the complete lack of an explanation or resolution of what is ging with Audrey.

It worked for me in Inland Empire though. I think this was similar in a lot of ways.

Perhaps Audrey, in her coma, filled the dreamer void left by Laura after she died and by Dale after he went to the Black Lodge. This doesn’t necessarily mean that she created a new reality but that she took over the reins of the pre-existing one.

I think reality in the show is a collective dream with many different layers, all of which act as their own realities. Laura and Dale, and later Audrey, had some sort of shaping power over the dream layer the show is largely set in.

Maybe the Odessa, TX dream layer is the one the Fireman sent Laura into in episode 8, after creating her. The world of the show has been reflecting the internal battle taking place inside Carrie/Laura, with Dale/Richard as her Fireman-pointed ally.

Overall, I agree that a lot of this season could be cut for needless fat. Some fan might in the future.

I could have done with 50% less Dougie and 50 % more Dale. And a story that focused more sharply on one or two things, like the Experiment thing and the frogbug girl. If the season had centered more on the events of episode 8 and had given more explanation of that, I think I would personally have liked it more. But that’s subjective I guess.

It is cruel that Dale Cooper was returned to his old life for about 5 minutes before disappearing into some horrific altermative reality.

It is cruel that Dale Cooper was returned to his old life for about 5 minutes before disappearing into some horrific altermative reality.

He was shot in the first season finale, and then trapped in a hellscape in the second, honestly it’s par for the course. It’s what makes me wary of those who want another season for some positive closure because…let’s face facts, I think Lynch overall sees Twin Peaks as a tragedy at this point.